BEATLES '64 - Mark Reviews Movies

Beatles '64, Disney+

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 29, 2024

Beatlemania was a real thing. The people who lived through the phenomenon still speak of it with joy and wonder in Beatles '64. Even those born decades and generations after the age of the Beatles know of it from their parents and grandparents and, at this point 60 years after the band's first arrival in the United States, beyond. Yes, it was the band itselfthose four Liverpudlians with the mop-top hair and the black suits and the attitude that all of this fame was a whole lot of fun. It was the music more than anything, though, because you can't hear that opening guitar chord progression to "I Want to Hold Your Hand" to this day without smiling.

It was just a lot of fun for John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr in those days, while the four of them were still together, making music, and living out the kind of fantasy that must have seemed surreal to a group of young men from working-class families. Director David Tedeschi lets us see that quality of the band, using restored footage from a documentary shot by the filmmaking brothers Albert and David Maysles, masters of the form, when the band made their visit to the United States in February of 1964.

Before the fame became too much for the group, they reveled in the absurdity of it. The Beatles were only together for a decade, but in those ten years, there were distinct stages to the band, its members, and the music. This part was the most purely joyous of them all, and one need only see the quartet joking around at press conferences and on a train ride from New York City to Washington, D.C., to remember when life did seem like a whole lot of fun.

That might be part of the reason why the legacy of the Beatles endures even now—why Tedeschi could make this documentary about a cultural milestone that is a legitimate part of history six decades after the fact. There were musical fandoms before the Beatles and after them, and there will be countless more that come and fade or persist for as long as humans are around to make and listen to music. That doesn't change the fact that Beatlesmania was unique, if only because we're still talking about it, whether the people doing the talking lived through it or not.

What's fascinating about Tedeschi's documentary about this moment in music and general history is how it evolves. At first, the film simply seems like an excuse to show off the Maysles Brothers' restored footage, which looks great here and really does give one a sense of what it must have been like to hang out with the Beatles at the moment their fame was solidified. While it never comes up in the documentary, it's interesting to note that the band would make A Hard Day's Night, one of the great film comedies, immediately upon returning home to England after their brief stay in the United States. The real-life footage we see here almost feels like an unofficial rehearsal for that film, but in reality, that's just what the guys were like back then.

There's much more than the contemporary documentary footage, though, as Tedeschi interviews people who lived through and were there for the Beatles' first U.S. stint, pulls archival footage of Lennon and Harrison for them to speak of this event in their careers, and films McCartney and Starr exploring Beatles exhibits and reminiscing about what happened. Starr is even joined by Martin Scorsese, who looks genuinely, almost childishly star-struck to be in the drummer's presence.

The stories come, both in the interviews and in the restored footage. One woman discusses buying a scrap of towel from outside the hotel where the band was headquartered in New York, based on the claim that one of the members used it at some point during their stay. A couple of teenage girls sneak into the hotel itself in '64, as the camera follows them around and sort of guides them to whichever suite in which the Beatles are holed up. They don't make it, of course, but one can almost feel the filmmakers hoping they'll do—out of admiration and for the spectacle of how the girls would react.

We all know how they probably would, because that's also part of the contemporary footage—girls and women in the audience of various concerts screaming and convulsing and just having the time of their young lives. None of that is new or unique to Tedeschi's film, and neither is footage of the band on "The Ed Sullivan Show," although that first appearance has become such a part of cultural history that it's easy to forget or to never have learned that the band appeared on the show two more times that same month. The whole thing probably felt like a blur to the Beatles, their fans, and especially those who didn't particularly care for the band or their music.

It was adults and parents in that last category, obviously, and the band gets that, too, reading reviews of their performances and just laughing off the doomsaying about how they're corrupting the youth. Some adults were ahead of the curve, including composer Leonard Berstein, who tells parents not to fear the Beatles and shows people why their music is more than noise.

One interviewee in Beatles '64 explains how his father, who refused to let him watch the TV appearances, never got over the assassination of John F. Kennedy, which happened less than three months before the Beatles' first U.S. visit. The Beatles helped the kids with that, as well, because sometimes we just need some joy after the world has gone to hell and before it all comes crashing down us again.

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